[TVARC] ARRL 10M Starts Today

[K2PS Pete Stafford]

Poor George.  I had felt guilty causing him to drive out to The Land with promises of the band being open until 10 or 11p, and nothing much was going on, at least at first.  At about 815p last night, moments after he pulled the plug and headed back home, the propagation gods decided to light things up.  After having a similar experience for the initial hour or so – starting out with only FL stations (thanks TVARC guys who called in), then a couple of weak MN and IA stations worked, some VE3s, and then followed by a small handful of CA stations, and even a very weak Australian – all of a sudden signals were roaring in from New England, OH, IL, and the rest of the Midwest.  Had the rate meter between 150-200/hour for much of that time.  It was a blast!  Finally decided to call it quits at about midnight since I had run out of gas, even though there were still some workable stations out there.  By then my QSO total sat at 400, mostly CW.  (Had to switch to SSB for a little while to be sure and pick up all those state multipliers, and the rate there was incredible too.)  I’ve never had a 10M Contest Friday night go anything like this one.  

 

I noticed that Rusty, W3US, is sitting at 278 contacts.  Wayta go!

 

Not sure what today will be like, but hopeful to work some Europeans around 9A, and SA later on.  

 

Hope George can get his timing right!

 

73, Pete, K2PS

 

From: George Briggs [mailto:k2dm at comcast.net] 
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2020 9:29 PM
To: K2PS Pete Stafford; tvarc at mailman.qth.net
Subject: RE: [TVARC] ARRL 10M Starts Today

 

I can see why Pete likes this contest.  I decided to play around in it a little, starting with an hour operating from The Land this evening.  I started at 7PM, as the contest started.  All I did was CQ for an hour.  During that time I worked a handful of friends from TVARC, including Ken, Russ, Rusty, Doug and Pete.  That in and of itself was fun.  But I was amazed at the vagaries of propagation during the hour.  I worked 39 stations in 9 states/provinces.  I worked FL (a lot), CA , NE, KS, SD, MO, NY, and VE3.  I would CQ without answers for a couple of minutes, then a station from NE would call.  Then a minute later a station from VE3.  Then CA, etc.  But never a run of more than two stations from the same area at a time.  And a couple of times I went a full 5 minutes CQing without an answer.  Crazy.  I may go back and try some more tomorrow morning.

GL Pete!

73,

George K2DM

 

 

Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986>  for Windows 10

 

From: K2PS Pete Stafford <mailto:psk2ps at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2020 12:39 PM
To: tvarc at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [TVARC] ARRL 10M Starts Today

 

My fave contest begins tonight at 7P and runs for 48 hours.  Generally speaking, 10 meters is open during the daylight hours, and closed at night.  However, my experience has been that Friday night is usually productive until 10 or 11P.  Remember, everyone can work everyone, so most of your contacts will be stateside.  The ARRL 10M Contest is probably not going to have the kinds of spectacular QSO totals that we’ll see in a couple of years as solar flux increases, but it still has a good variety of propagation to offer.  And we probably won’t be able to work the world on a window screen antenna, but a good deal of DX should be workable.  Likely to see a small EU opening each morning at maybe 9A or so, and South American stations will certainly be coming in during the afternoon hours.  Also, we should have a good chance to work into Australia/New Zealand later in the afternoon.

 

The contest allows us to work one another on both CW and SSB (no digital), and the exchange for us would be 59(9) FL.  So look for states and provinces, and also Mexican states.  And for DX, they’ll give a serial number.

 

I’ll be on mostly CW (since it’s twice the points), and moving to SSB when things get slow.  (If you want to enter the contest, you can be all CW, or all SSB, or Mixed.)  Running only 150W to stay in the LP category, but I’ve put up my 4 element 10M yagi, so hopeful to do well.  Please look for me and give me a call!

 

73, Pete, K2PS

 

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